Niall’s just looking for a quiet life, ever since the botched vampire attack that turned him into a ghoul. He’s even trying to stay off the pleasures of human flesh.

Jamie’s a revenge-driven kid on a vampire killing spree, and he needs Niall’s help to survive. Somehow Niall finds his long-dormant conscience -- and his libido -- waking up. But Jamie’s luck can only last so long.

This is a visceral story of love (or something like it) among the undead.

EXCERPT:Note: may contain sexually explicit scenes of a homoerotic nature.

Niall sees Jamie a lot, after that. A cute blond blur in his peripheral vision. The warfarin-laced sugar put down to catch the undead rats. Niall wonders if Jamie’s found the one that killed his little fuck-buddy yet. Wonders if he cares.

“How many kills have you made now?” he asks one night, when he’s left the Pit a few minutes after Jamie and found him in an alleyway, standing by the corpse of a vamp as it deliquesces and turns to a thick smear of reddish slime. Must have been a young one; the old ones are dry as the dust they crumble into, that catches in your throat and turns your stomach.

Jamie whirls, knife half-raised. He’s hyped up by the kill, bouncing in those trainers again. “You. I’ve made plenty.”

“Be getting yourself a reputation.” Niall watches the blade paint pretty patterns on the wall with the orange light from the lone streetlamp. “Don’t you ever get tired of all this? You never wake up and think, Hell, fuck the killing, tonight I’m just gonna go out and get laid?”

The kid sneers, still drunk on success. “You offering?”

Niall smiles. “Maybe I am. So what are you going to do about it, kid?”

The patterns tremble. “Scared?” Niall taunts. He rubs a hand over his crotch, a hard bulge outlined in the worn denim of his jeans. “C’mon. You know you want a piece of this.”

The light show dies as the kid points the blade straight at him. “Against the wall,” Jamie pants. “No -- you face that fucking wall so I know where your teeth are, okay?” Actions suited to words, Niall finds himself slammed against mildewed brickwork that tells him to Call Cindy for a good time.

“Gonna fuck me?” Niall doesn’t usually do this, he’s a top, but the kid’s still got his blade out and fuck, that’s a turn on. Even though he could snap this kid’s neck in a heartbeat. “Hope you brought protection.”

Jamie stills. “You can get AIDS?”

Niall’s laugh is dry, silent. He can smell the kid’s anger. Will he use the knife? Niall presses his dick into the wall, rolls his hips to grind the sensitive flesh against the filthy brickwork. Needs more. “Come on, kid, give it to me. If you’ve got the balls.”

“I’ve got the balls, you fucking asshole.” He wrenches down Niall’s pants, shoves a couple of fingers up inside him. “Hot,” he whispers in Niall’s ear, like a kid, his first time near a real fire. “I thought you’d be cold.”